


Defective

by Ice_Tiger



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Brothers, Bullying, Child Abuse, Evil Plans, Gen, Identity Swap, Jim is legal age of consent, Kid Fic, Kid Jim, Kinda, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Sex, Moriarty Twins, Murder, Not Twincest, POV Jim Moriarty, Poison, Richard has problems, Schizophrenia, Seb is a bad influence, Sibling Love, Slurs, Suicidal Thoughts, Teenagers, They're kids for like half of it, Twins, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex, Underage Smoking, sensory processing disorder, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 20:30:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1277968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ice_Tiger/pseuds/Ice_Tiger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Defective. It was a word he'd heard his father use, one that made his mother angry. Jim was pretty sure it meant the same thing as broken. He wondered if Richie was broken, and if he'd ever be fixed, and if Jim would ever have a brother that cared about him and wanted to play with him and talk to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defective

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DestinedForJohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestinedForJohnlock/gifts).



> This work is roughly based off of a prompt from destinedforjohnlock. Thank you to A.E.A for her help and feedback. And your feedback and comments are always appreciated.

“Richie...Richie, come play.”  
“He won't listen to you Jim. Leave your brother alone.”  
“Richie!”  
“Jim, you'll scare him. Leave him alone.”  
“Richie, why won't you play with me!”

Jim was up on the bed next to his brother, trying to wrench Richard's his hands away from his ears. The little boy was curled in on himself like a one of those fuzzy black and brown caterpillars you find in the fall, hiding under leaves. He didn't move. He didn't often. Jim was upset with him for being so boring. He wrapped his small fingers around his brother's wrist and pulled harder. Richard couldn't hear him if he was covering his ears like that.

“That's because he doesn't like the noise.” His mother always told him. “It scares him. Richie isn't like you, Jimmy. He was born different.”

But he was boring, oh so boring, oh so aggravating to Jim, even when he was only six years old. Jim kept tugging at Richard's hands and shouting. “Richie, stop doing that! Listen to me!” 

Jim's mother grabbed him roughly by the waist and pulled him away from his twin, Who was now shaking and whimpering on the bed. “Jim, go!” his mother barked at him, sitting down next to the other boy. Jim caught a glimpse of her trying to touch Richard's back, and him shoving her away, before he was out of the room.

....

Richard was different. When Jim was six years old, that meant that Richard was no fun. It meant that he didn't like noise or light, or being touched, and that he stayed in his room all day, that he and Jim couldn't share a bed. It meant that Richard was boring, and that Jim's mother had stopped paying attention to him and spent all her time trying to help poor, defective Richie. 

Defective. It was a word he'd heard his father use, one that made his mother angry. Jim was pretty sure it meant the same thing as broken. He wondered if Richie was broken, and if he'd ever be fixed, and if Jim would ever have a brother that cared about him and wanted to play with him and talk to him.

Jim's father had wanted to keep Richard. He'd but you couldn't get rid of one twin and not the other, and Jim's mother had begged, so they'd compromised. Richard was kept quiet. Jim wasn't supposed to tell anyone he had a brother, and Richard didn't go to school. 

When Jim was a little older, he started hearing new words. When he was about nine he learned the definitions of Sensory Processing Disorder and Childhood Schizophrenia. Jim's mother would sneak the twins out of the house sometimes and take them to specialists, desperate to understand what was wrong with her son. She couldn't afford medication, and even if she could it would have been too hard to hide it from her husband. So Richard stayed broken.

Around that time, Jim had stopped hating Richard and started protecting him.

It took a long time for Richard to talk to Jim, but finally Jim stopped yelling, and learned to be soft. Richard heard everything like it was shouted into a megaphone, like it was an inch from his ear. Noise ripped him in half. Sometimes Jim would get excited or angry and his voice would climb, and Richie would clap his hands over his ears and start to whimper, and it would take and hour of whispered coaxing and soft humming to get him out of his shell again.

 

Richard liked silk. He'd started sleeping on the floor naked because his cotton sheets scratched at his skin, and the blankets were too rough and his pajamas didn't feel good. And then one day, Richard had found an old silk scarf in his mother's closet and fallen in love with the way it felt. Jim had come home from school and found his brother curled up with it. It was the only thing soft enough for him, and Jim wished he could buy Richard all the silk in a the world. 

On their tenth birthday, Jim had stolen a blue silk sheet from a John Lewis store and brought it home to his brother. Richard wrapped himself up in it, a cocoon to keep away everything bad. He slept better after that, and never asked where the sheet came from. 

That was when Richard started to love Jim.

It took longer for Richard to let Jim touch him, although after Jim's birthday present, he let his twin get a bit nearer. At some point he started sleeping in Jim's bed, still wrapped in the silk sheet. And after a while, a hand crept out from the sheet and slid into Jim's.

That was when Richard started to trust Jim.

Sometimes, Richard would cry because he saw things Jim couldn't, and Jim would sing quietly to Richard until he stopped crying.

Sometimes Jim wouldn't be there were Richard started to get scared, and his father would hear the crying and get angry and hit Richard, and then the boy wouldn't let anyone touch him for a month.

That's when Jim started thinking about murder. 

....

When Jim was twelve years old, he met Carl Powers. Carl went to his school, and Jim wanted Carl to disappear. 

Carl was ten, just a kid, but taller and heavier than Jim. He should have been too young to bother Jim, but he was cruel. Not cruel in the way Jim was, not cruel to show people what they were doing was wrong, not cruel as a way to get revenge or make people notice him. Carl was needlessly, stupidly mean. 

Carl had friends who were older, some older then Jim. They would follow him home from school, laughing and throwing rocks after him. Most of the time it was jut pebbles and cat calls, but on bad days it was “faggot” and “freak,” and the rocks were the size of his fist and left bruises on his back. 

One day, one of the older boys noticed Richard in the window.  
“Freak, there's two of you!”  
“Why don't he go to our school, he some kind of retard?”  
Jim had wanted to kill them all, but he'd just run into the house, back to safety, back to Richie.

....

When the twins were thirteen, Jim's mother convinced his father to let Jim take Richard for walks. Richard wore sunglasses because the light hurt his eyes, and he walked behind Jim, careful not to fall behind. He clung to the hem of Jim's shirt, afraid to get lost, but just by his fingertips because he didn't like the fabric.

“Richard, you wanna go outside?” Jim's twin looked up from the book he'd been reading, something about space travel and sci-fi, and locked his eyes on Jim's. “Yeah. Let me get my shoes.”

“Need help?” Richard shook his head. “I know how to put on my own shoes.” Jim sat on the edge of the bed, waiting, watching his brother lace up the black trainers Jim had stolen for him from a department store. It had become somewhat of a hobby, stealing Richie presents. It occupied him, and it made his twin happy. Richard finished looping the laces into a bow and followed Jim outside, down the road a few blocks to the park. “Jim, slow down.”

Jim froze in his tracks. “Not that slow.” Richard muttered. But Jim was looking ahead, past his brother, at the people moving towards them. Carl Powers and his friends. “Richie, we're going home.” Jim's voice was firm and loud, and Richard flinched, shivering a bit. “Jimmy...” Jim didn't realize he'd scared his brother, he was too busy watching the forms get closer, seeing their faces and the recognition on them. “Hey! The retard twins!” He heard the voice, and recognized it as Carl's.

They were on them in a few seconds, shouting insults and laughing. One shoved Jim to ground, another kicked him. Carl had got a hold of Richard's jacket and yanked at it, sending the boy falling to the ground next to Jim, who was fuming. That was when Richard started to panic, and things turned to chaos.

Jim had no way of knowing what his brother was seeing, but from the distress in his eyes, Richard's mine was subjecting him to sheer terror. Richard started crying, and Carl started laughing again, and someone kicked Richard and someone else laughed at him and Richard was on the ground with his hands over his ears, flinching away from kicks and catcalls and his own hallucinations, and there was nothing Jim could do to help. 

“Fuck off!” He knew the scream would hurt Richard more than it would hurt Carl and his friends, but it was the only thing that came to his mind. He scrambled to his feet and threw himself at Carl, tackling him to the ground and away from Richard, who was having some sort of fit at this point. “Stay away from my brother!” All the attention was on him now, and he was pulled off Carl screaming and kicking by the two oldest boys.

He felt a fist connect to his jaw, another to his stomach, then the ground, hard against his back. A few more kicks to the ribs, and then he heard the laughing voices retreating, leaving he and his brother on the ground.

He hand to Carry Richard home. Richard fought back, and Jim knew how horrible it must feel to the boy's overs-sensitive skin, but Richard wouldn't walk. Jim sneaked him back into their room without their parents noticing, ignoring his own injuries, cleaned Richard up and wrapped him in his sheet.

Richard didn't talk for two months after that, and Jim spent every waking moment planning revenge.

....

The swim meet was in another city. Jim could have just stayed at home, let the clostridium botulinum take effect, and read about Carl's death in the papers. But he needed to see it happen. Carl had hurt his brother, and Jim wanted to watch him die. So when Carl started to choke and spasm in the water, Jim was sitting in the bleachers, pretending he cared.

Anyone else would have just left. Anyone else would have made it their priority to put as much distance as possible between them and their victim, even if there was no evidence of foul play. But before Jim got back on the train to go home to Richie, he stole himself a souvenir: Carl's trainers, the oversized white ones, the one's he'd been wearing when he kicked Richard in the chest. Jim wrapped the shoes up in a plastic bad, bud still on them, and packed them away. When he got home, he hid the shoes in the top of closet, careful to do it when Richard was sleeping. Jim didn't want his twin to know he was a murderer. Besides, he'd only done it to keep Richie safe. And because Carl needed to learn to stop laughing. 

....

Richard was never the same after the attack in the park. He rarely spoke, and when he did it was only to Jim. Their mother tried unsuccessfully to bring him back, but Richard had changed. 

“What happened to him, Jim? And don't lie to me, I know you know.”  
“Nothing. He just changed.”  
“Jim.”  
“I told you, I don't know. Maybe there's no reason. Maybe he just got worse.”  
Their mother had taken Richard to get a non-driver photo ID, worried that he might wander out of the house and get lost. “If someone finds him, they'll need to know who he is.”

Richard's hallucinations were more frequent now, too, and from what Jim could tell, they were more vivid. Jim didn't like to think about what Richard was seeing, and Richard never told him, so the only information Jim got was when Richie talked in his sleep. Richard didn't sleep well in general. Night time was when the monsters in his head came out to play, and Jim had woken many times to find his brother, wrapped in his silk sheet, curled up to Jim's side and sobbing softly into the pillow. Jim would hum to him and shush him softly, like a small child, until his body stilled and his mind slowed down enough for him to sleep. If it didn't bother Richard, Jim would stroke his dark hair until he stopped seeing things, but most of the time his brother was too sensitive for that.

....

Jim started drinking when he was sixteen years old.

He didn't really start drinking, although sometimes alcohol was involved, but he spent almost every night sneaking into bars or clubs. He could get away from his life there, meet strange men who would buy him drinks and take care of him. Sometimes he would go home with them, sometimes he would sleep with them, but he didn't often because it upset Richard when Jim spent the night away. Sometimes Jim wished he could away from Richard, but his twin was always on hid conscience. 

Often, Jim would just sit around, flirt and drink. He liked men that were bigger than him, men with scared bodies and perfect faces, men with soft hair and terrifying minds. But on most nights, he'd settle for any idiot that bought him a drink.

That's when he met Sebastian.

The cub was loud and dimly lit, and Jim had several shots of vodka in him. Richard had had a particularly bad day, meaning that Jim had too. He'd woken up at four in the morning and whispered that there was something attacking him, something trying to eat him. None of Jim's usual tactics had worked, and Richard had spiraled, panicked, pushed Jim away and shouted that he wasn't real. Then he started panicking even more because his own shout was too loud and had scared him. He'd thrown things around the room, sobbing, screaming even though it hurt his own ears, scratching at his arms until they bled. By ten in the morning, Richard was a sobbing, injured mess on he floor, and when Jim had wrapped a soft blanket around his shoulders an held him close, Richard whispered to him. 

“I want to die.”

Jim downed another shot and tried to forget about his broken other half. 

“What's a little kitten like you doing here?” Someone's breath, hot on the back of Jim's neck. He turned his head to see the owner of the voice, and his eyes met the man's, icy blue and dangerous. Muscular, a few tattoos littering his arms, but smart, not some mindless brute, powerful and, as his eyes had shown, dangerous. He was young, but too old for Jim. Early twenties, maybe. He wore a chain around his neck attached to something that, judging by the outline under his tight shirt, might have been army dog tags.

“I'm not your kitten.” Jim slurred, a bit stupidly. He'd never been very clever when he was tipsy. The soldier laughed, scoffed, really. “I didn't say you were mine. I don't fuck twelve-year-olds.”  
“Not twelve.”  
“You look it.”

Jim dug his fingernail into his palm. The soldier looked him over. “How old are you then.” Jim continued to glare at his hands. “Sixteen.” The soldier scratched the back of his neck. “Sixteen? Well, that's not so bad. Hey.” He reached down and caught a hold of Jim's hand, gently unclenching it to reveal the little red marks where his fingernails had been. “You upset, kitten?”  
“My name is Jim.”  
“Mine's Sebastian. You upset about something, Jim?”  
“Maybe.”  
“You wouldn't be making fucking wholes in your palm and trying to drink yourself to death if you weren't.” Jim glared up at him, willing him to leave, but deep down he wanted the soldier to stay. There was something fascinating about him. Jim was quiet for a second, then said quietly, “My brother.”

Sebastian considered him for a few long seconds, and Jim got the feeling that the man was trying to decide whether Jim was worth it. He seemed to decide in the affirmative because he sat down on the bar stool next to Jim's. “Tell me your story, kid.”

Jim told Sebastian everything that night. He told him about Richard, and the silk sheet, and the hallucinations, and their abusive father. He told him about how no one ever let Richard leave the house for longer than a few minutes at a time, and never without Jim. He told him about Carl,and the attack in the park, and Carl's death, although Jim conveniently left out that he had been Carl's murderer. He told him every last detail, talked for hours, and somewhere near the end he realized he was crying. Sebastian listened to ever word, and when they were done talking, he drove Jim home. The first time Jim went home with Sebastian was a week later. 

That was when Jim learned that sex didn't have to be meaningless.

....

Jim quickly learned everything there was to know about Sebastian. He was twenty eight years old. He had been a soldier, a sniper, in fact, but was dishonourably discharged for sleeping with his commanding officer. He like tigers, more specifically, hunting tigers. He told Jim that he'd once chased a fully grown one down a street drain with nothing but a knife, and won. He told Jim this while they were sitting on his bed, and pointed to the striped skin hanging on the wall opposite. “That's her. She put up a good fight.” Jim never knew whether or not to believe him. Sebastian had a mark on his arm, three deep scars, old ones. “Tiger claw.” he told Jim when he saw him looking.

Sebastian had spent the first few weeks they knew each other swearing up and down that he wasn't a pedophile. The age difference didn't bother Jim. He may have been a minor, but he was legal age of consent, and he'd been the adult in his family since he was nine. It wasn't Sebastian's fault, anyway, because the things that happened between them were always initiated by Jim.

Jim never gave Richard and Sebastian the chance to meet. He didn't know he was so anxious to keep hidden away like some big secret, especially after he had told Sebastian everything about his twin. But Richard was his, and he was too fragile to introduce into Sebastian world, the world of guns and tigers and tigers and sex. 

Sebastian had started Jim smoking shortly after they met, and Richard didn't like it. Jim had to take a shower and change his clothes any time he wanted to get near to his brother, but on occasion the smell of stale smoke and tobacco clung to his skin. Richard didn't know the real Sebastian, but he hated the idea of him, taking his brother away from him all night and making him smell bad and act distant. 

Jim had tried to explain to Richard that they were sixteen now, and Jim couldn't spend every second of his life looking after his twin, but the truth of the matter was that Richard needed constant looking after. He was like a child, and Jim was the only one he trusted enough to care for him.

....

Three month's before the twins' seventeenth birthday, their mother died. Jim didn't cry. Sebastian came to the funeral and stood in the back, directly behind the twins, watching their identical black suited backs. Richard had to leave half an hour into the service, and Jim took hi home, catching Sebastian's eye on the way out.

Jim dropped out of school the week after his mother died. He would have moved in with Sebastian with that if it weren't for his brother. As it was, staying in his house meant subjecting himself to his father's rage, and he started to spend every possible moment at a bar, or in the park, or in Sebastian's bed, and Jim's father turned to the only available target: Richard.

Jim would come home nearly every night to find his brother on their bedroom floor, bruised and bloody. He would take the old blue silk sheet, now faded and fraying around the edges, and wrap Richard up the way he did when they were small. He hated leaving him, but his conscience wasn't strong enough to make him stay at home.

Jim wasn't sure exactly when Richard stopped talking for good. All he knew was that sometime in the months after his mother died, he stopped hearing his brother's voice, and he never heard it again.

....

“He told me he wanted to die, once.” Sebastian looked up from the cigarette he was trying to start, the lighter dangling from his fingertips. “Huh?” Jim was lying on his back on Sebastian's bed, a fag dangling from between his lips, and Sebastian was sitting next to him. “Richie. The day I met you, he told me he wanted to die.” Jim took a long drag from the cigarette. “But he's not living, not really. The way he exists doesn't count as living. I wish....I wish I could give him my life, but that's not the way it works.” He let his arm flop down, hanging off the edge of the bed. A tendril of smoke floated up from the cigarette between his fingers. “He's too fragile for reality.”  
“He used to talk, then?” Jim gave a little nod. “Yeah. He talked a lot. And then, after Carl...Then he only talked to me.” He let the cigarette start to smolder out in his hand, not finding it worth the effort to bring it to his lips again. “I think the silence makes it easier for him him. It protects him. Like I said...he's not really living. It would hurt him too much to live.”  
“You know your da's probably beating him right now.”Jim's voice was cold. “I know.” He knew it well To well. “I have to leave there, Seb. I don't mean like, I have to go get out. Well, I do mean that, but that's not what I was talking about. I mean....I'm nearly seventeen. I'm not going to live at home forever. But Richie can;t survive on his own, and he definitely can't survive with da, and I can;t just keep him with me the rest of my life. If I move out, he'll die.” Sebastian stubbed out the cigarette on the bed frame, and got up to drop in the ashtray.”Wouldn't that be for the best? You said yourself, he's not really living.” Jim sighed, closing his eyes.“I can't pretend I haven't thought about it.”

....

Jim first brought up the subject of him leaving in the middle of the night, when Richard was curled up to his side under the blanket, night time hiding the bruises on his arms. “I can't stay with you forever, Richie. You know that, yeah?” That time Richard had just shaken his head, because he needed his brother to stay with him forever, and Jim didn't push the topic any farther. 

Richard didn't seem to have the drive to live. He didn't want to go for walks or read or even eat, he spent the whole day in bed, and he barely even seemed to hear Jim when his brother spoke to him. Once or twice, their father would beat Richard when Jim was hoping, watching from the doorway and biting his tongue so hard it bled, wishing he had enough strength or courage to save his brother. He noticed that Richard didn't fight back, just stood there wand let himself be kicked and hit. Richard wasn't alive, wasn't living. He was just existing.

....

“Do you think he's suicidal?” Sebastian asked Jim one night, after he'd gone off on another rant about his brother. “I don't think he has enough in him to be.” Jim said quietly. “Don't you think...” Sebastian trailed off. “Don't I think what?”  
“Nothing.”  
“Tell me.”  
“No.” Jim kicked hard at Sebastian's leg. “You have to tell me.” Sebastian rolled his eyes. “You'll be angry with me.”  
“I'm already angry with you for not telling me. Look, if you tell me what you were going to say, I'll tell you a secret.” Sebastian huffed in exasperation. “Fine. Don't you think your brother would be better of dead?”

Jim was silent for a few seconds, and the room was so quiet that Jim could hear his heartbeat. “Fuck you. Shut the fuck up.” Jim spit the words at Sebastian, venom in his voice, but it was hard. Because if he really thought about, if he let himself be honest, the answer was yes. Richard was far better off dead.

“You said you had a secret for me.”  
“No.”  
“You promised. Come on, What's your secret?” Jim rolled over, burying his face in the pillow. “I killed Carl Powers.”

....

Jim wasn't a murderer. He didn't think of Carl's death as a murder. It was revenge, and he'd never felt a shred of remorse or guilt about it. Apparently Sebastian didn't care about what Jim had done either, but Sebastian had no morals whatsoever, so that wasn't a surprise.

....

“Better off dead” was the phrase that permeated Jim's thoughts after that. He'd snapped at Sebastian when the man had suggested it, but not because he disagreed. It was just that Jim saw himself as the person in charge of Richard's life, his caretaker, almost his owner. Jim was allowed to think that sort of thing, but Sebastian wasn't, no matter how true it was. The fact of the matter was that Richard was never going to be happy. All Richard wanted was relief. And as horrid as it was to think about, Jim knew how to give it to him. 

That was when Jim started planning.

This isn't murder either. This is help. Jim was going to use poison this time too. Not botulinum. Something fast, something painless. All he wanted was to put Richie to rest. 

By the time he brought Sebastian in on the plan, it was all in place. Sebastian, good old Sebastian, didn't even flinch as Jim laid out the details. It was Sebastian who came up with the identity switch. “You're a bloody twin. That's every criminal's nightmare.”  
“I'm not a criminal.”  
“You're seventeen years old, and soon you'll have killed two people. I doubt you'll stop there. Someday, you'll need a second identity. And when you've got a handy second name and a face that looks just like yours, you'll be grateful.”  
“I can't use his death like that.”  
:You'll be giving his death a purpose.”

When he went home that night, he slipped Richards photo ID from the bedside table and pocketed it. 

Richard didn't sleep often, and when he did it was only for about an hour at a time, so Jim was careful not to wake him. Sleeping was Richard's only escape, and even that was interrupted by nightmares. Jim kissed his brother gently on the forehead and lay down next to him. He was going to give him rest. He was going to make sure no one could ever hurt Richard again. 

....

Jim didn't want anyone to be home when he did it. Just he and Richie. Jim never felt guilty, not for a second, because Sebastian was right. Jim was going to leave some day, and leaving Richard alone with his father was not an option. It was better this way. As he handed Richard the glass of water, and the cup left his hand, he felt a twinge of sadness, of premature loss. “I'm sorry, Richie.” he murmured, as his brother lifted the water to his lips an took a sip. 

....

The photo ID card gleamed under the bedroom lights as Jim held it out for Sebastian to examine.”Richard Brook. Why isn't he Richard Moriarty?” Jim lowered the card an slipped back into his pocket. “Mum wanted us to have a hyphenated last name. She was a Brook. Da wouldn't let her, so they fought about it and eventually he agreed to let one of us keep her last name. So I'm Moriarty, and he's Brook.” Both Jim and Sebastian had there eyes fixed on the motionless figure on the ground. Sebastian was the first to move again, picking up Jim's wallet and holding it out to him. “Not that this isn't a brilliant plan, especially as most of it came from a seventeen year old, but won't your father know the difference between you and Richard?” Jim shook his head. “He'll be too drunk to tell. And he wouldn't care, anyway.” Jim took the wallet, marveling at the steadiness of his hand. Anyone else would be shaking. Then again, anyone else would be crying. Anyone else wouldn't have killed their twin brother.

Jim opened the wallet and slipped Richard's ID inside, pulling out his own. He walked slowly to his brother's body, kneeling on the floor in front of him. When he reached out, he was cautious, hands gentle as he slipped his own ID into Richard's pocket, as though he could still hurt the other boy. That was it, the end of the plan. Richard was gone where no one and nothing could hurt him, his body was marked with Jim's name, and Jim had his brother's name and identity stored safe in his pocket. Jim could leave now. Except, he couldn't. He couldn't just leave his brother there, lying on the floor. 

The silk sheet was folded at the end of Jim's bed, their bed, really, as Richard never slept in his own. Jim swept the blankets off with one arm and shook out the sheet, covering the mattress. Richard was much lighter in death than he had been alive, fitting easily in Jim's arms as he lifted him onto the bed. He set his brother down, folded the silk sheet over his body and tucked him in, taking care to make comfortable. Richie's own little cocoon, protecting him from the world. His brother was finally sleeping soundly. 

 

“Come on, Seb. Let's go home.”


End file.
